Micron Accuracy Deployment Experiments (MADE): A space station laboratory for actively controlled precision deployable structures technology

The Micron Accuracy Deployment Experiments (MADE) facility will be an orbiting laboratory for engineering research on precision deployable structures. Such technology is crucial to the deployment of large science instruments such as the Space Interferometer Mission and the Next Generation Space Telescope, as well as other spacecraft requiring large deployed optics. For these missions, very lightweight instruments must be deployed on orbit and their dimensional stability must be actively controlled to nanometers of resolution—a technology not yet demonstrated on any spacecraft. Data from ground tests of prototype precision deployable structures indicate that, not only is this level of stability difficult to achieve on deployable structures in 1-g, but the governing microdynamics should change substantially in 0-g. The MADE facility will provide a laboratory for investigating the effects of 0-g on the microdynamics of precision deployable structures, and for developing low-cost, reliable, precision deployab...